1924 – World Savings Day was announced in Milano/Italy by the Members of the Association at the 1st International Savings Bank Congress (World Society of Savings Banks).

1926 – Magician Harry Houdini dies of gangrene and peritonitis that developed after his appendix ruptured.

1936 – The Boy Scouts of the Philippines was formed.

1938 – Great Depression: In an effort to try restore investor confidence, the New York Stock Exchange unveils a fifteen-point program aimed to upgrade protection for the investing public.

1940 – World War II: Battle of Britain ends – The United Kingdom prevents Germany from invading Great Britain.

1941 – After 14 years of work, drilling is completed on Mount Rushmore.

1941 – World War II: The destroyer USS Reuben James is torpedoed by a German U-boat near Iceland, killing more than 100 United States Navy sailors. It is the first U.S. Navy vessel sunk by enemy action in WWII.

1968 – Vietnam War October surprise: Citing progress with the Paris peace talks, US President Lyndon B. Johnson announces to the nation that he has ordered a complete cessation of “all air, naval, and artillery bombardment of North Vietnam” effective November 1.

1984 – Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is assassinated by two Sikh security guards (riots soon broke out in New Delhi and nearly 2,000 innocent Sikhs were killed).

1986 – The 5th congress of the Communist Party of Sweden is inaugurated. During the course of the congress the party name is changed to the Solidarity Party and the party ceases to be a communist party.

1991 – A three day long snow and ice storm, dubbed the Halloween Blizzard, begins over portions of the Upper Midwest of the United States.

1994 – An American Eagle ATR-72 crashes in Roselawn, Indiana, after circling in icy weather, killing 68 passengers and crew.

1945 – Jackie Robinson of the Kansas City Monarchs signs a contract for the Brooklyn Dodgers to break the baseball color barrier.

1947 – The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which is the foundation of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), is founded.

1950 – Pope Pius XII witnesses “The Miracle of the Sun” while at the Vatican.

1953 – Cold War: U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower formally approves the top secret document National Security Council Paper No. 162/2, which states that the United States’ arsenal of nuclear weapons must be maintained and expanded to counter the communist threat.

1960 – Michael Woodruff performs the first successful kidney transplant in the United Kingdom at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.

1961 – Nuclear testing: The Soviet Union detonates the hydrogen bomb Tsar Bomba over Novaya Zemlya; at 58 megatons of yield, it is still the largest nuclear device ever detonated. Nikita Kruschev announces that the scientists had planned to make it 100 megatons, but had reduced the yield to reduce fallout over the Soviet Union.

1961 – Because of “violations of Lenin’s precepts”, it is decreed that Josef Stalin’s body be removed from its place of honour inside Lenin’s tomb and buried near the Kremlin wall with a plain granite marker instead.

1965 – Vietnam War: Just miles from Da Nang, United States Marines repel an intense attack by wave after wave of Viet Cong forces, killing 56 guerrillas. Among the dead, a sketch of Marine positions was found on the body of a 13-year-old Vietnamese boy who sold drinks to the Marines the day before.

1970 – In Vietnam, the worst monsoon to hit the area in six years causes large floods, kills 293, leaves 200,000 homeless and virtually halts the Vietnam War.

1972 – A collision between two commuter trains in Chicago, Illinois kills 45 and injures 332.

1973 – The BosporusBridge in Istanbul, Turkey is completed, connecting the continents of Europe and Asia over the Bosporus for the first time.

Share this:

Like this:

529 BC – The international day of Cyrus the Great, king of Persia, who declared the first charter of human rights in the world also known as Cyrus Cylinder.

437 – Valentinian III, Western Roman Emperor, marries Licinia Eudoxia, daughter of his cousin Theodosius II, Eastern Roman Emperor in Constantinople. This unifies the two branches of the House of Theodosius

969 – Byzantine troops occupy AntiochSyria

1268 – Conradin, the last legitimate male heir of the Hohenstaufen dynasty of Kings of Germany and Holy Roman Emperors, is executed along with his companion Frederick I, Margrave of Baden by Charles I of Sicily, a political rival and ally to the hostile Roman Catholic church.

1390 – First trial for witchcraft in Paris.

1422 – Charles VII of France becomes king in succession to his father Charles VI of France

1467 – Battle of Brusthem: Charles the Bold defeats Liege

1618 – English adventurer, writer, and courtier Sir Walter Raleigh is beheaded for allegedly conspiring against James I of England.

1658 – Action of 29 October 1658 (Naval battle)

1665 – Battle of Ambuila, where Portuguese forces defeated the forces of the Kingdom of Kongo and decapitated king Antonio I of Kongo, also called Nvita a Nkanga.

1792 – Mount Hood (Oregon) is named after the British naval officer Alexander Arthur Hood by Lt. William E. Broughton who spotted the mountain near the mouth of the WillametteRiver.

1859 – Spain declares war on Morocco.

1863 – Sixteen countries meeting in Geneva agree to form the International Red Cross.

1863 – American Civil War: Battle of Wauhatchie – Forces under Union General Ulysses S. Grant ward off a Confederate attack led by General James Longstreet. Union forces thus open a supply line into Chattanooga, Tennessee.

1881 – The Judge (US magazine) first published.

1886 – The ticker-tape parade is invented in New York City when office workers spontaneously throw ticker tape into the streets as the Statue of Liberty is dedicated.

1901 – In Amherst, Massachusetts nurse Jane Toppan is arrested for murdering the Davis family of Boston with an overdose of morphine.

1901 – Capital punishment: Leon Czolgosz, the assassin of US President William McKinley, is executed by electrocution.

1913 – Floods in El Salvador kill thousands.

1921 – The LinkRiver Dam, a part of the Klamath Reclamation Project, is completed.

1921 – Second trial of Sacco and Vanzetti in USA.

1921 – The HarvardUniversity football team loses to CentreCollege, ending a 25 game winning streak. This is considered one of the biggest upsets in college football.

1956 – Tangier Protocol signed: The international city Tangier is reintegrated into Morocco.

1957 – Israel’s prime minister David Ben Gurion and five of his ministers are injured as a hand grenade is tossed into Israel’s parliament, the Knesset.

1960 – In Louisville, Kentucky, Cassius Clay (who later takes the name Muhammad Ali) wins his first professional fight.

1961 – Syria exits from the United Arab Republic.

1964 – Tanganika and Zanzibar join to form the Republic of Tanzania.

1964 – A collection of irreplaceable gems, including the 565 carat (113 g) Star of India, is stolen by a group of thieves including Jack Murphy from the AmericanMuseum of Natural History in New York City.

1967 – London criminal Jack McVitie is murdered by the Kray twins, leading to their eventual imprisonment and downfall.

1967 – Montreal’s World Fair, Expo 67, closes with over 50 million visitors.

1969 – The first-ever computer-to-computer link is established on ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet.

1971 – Vietnam War: Vietnamization – The total number of American troops still in Vietnam drops to a record low of 196,700 (the lowest level since January 1966).

1983 – Over 500,000 people demonstrate against cruise missiles in The Hague, The Netherlands.

1985 – Major General Samuel K. Doe is announced the winner of the first multiparty election in Liberia.

1986 – British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher opens the last stretch of the M25 motorway.

1988 – Pakistan’s General Rahimuddin Khan resigns from his post as Governor of Sindh, following the efforts by President of Pakistan Ghulam Ishaq Khan to limit the powers Rahimuddin had accumulated.

1991 – The American Galileo spacecraft makes its closest approach to 951 Gaspra, becoming the first probe to visit an asteroid.

1994 – Francisco Martin Duran fires over two dozen shots at the White House (Duran was later convicted of trying to kill US President Bill Clinton).

1998 – Apartheid: In South Africa, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission presents its report, which condemns both sides for committing atrocities.

1998 – Space Shuttle Discovery blasts off on STS-95 with 77-year old John Glenn on board, making him the oldest person to go into space.

1998 – ATSC HDTV broadcasting in the United States is inaugurated with the launch of STS-95 space shuttle mission.

1998 – While en route from Adana to Ankara, a Turkish Airlines flight with a crew of 6 and 33 passengers is hijacked by a Kurdish militant who orders the pilot to fly to Switzerland. The plane instead lands in Ankara after the pilot tricked the hijacker into thinking that he was landing in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia to refuel.

1998 – Hurricane Mitch, the second deadliest Atlantic hurricane in history, made landfall in Honduras.

2002 – Ho Chi Minh City ITC Inferno, a fire destroys a luxurious department store with 1500 people shopping. Over 60 people died and over 100 are missing. It is the deadliest disaster in Vietnam during peacetime.

2004 – The Arabic news network Al Jazeera broadcasts an excerpt from a video of Osama bin Laden in which the terrorist leader first admits direct responsibility for the September 11, 2001 attacks and references the 2004 U.S. presidential election.

2004 – In Rome, European heads of state sign the Treaty and Final Act establishing the first European Constitution.

1893 – Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 in B Minor, Pathétique, premiered in St. Petersburg, only nine days before the composer’s death.

1918 – World War I: Czechoslovakia is granted its independence from Austria-Hungary.

1918 – The German fleet is immobilized when sailors mutiny en masse and disobey an order to leave port five times; 1,000 would ultimately be arrested.

1918 – New Polish government in Western Galicia (Central Europe) is established.

1919 – The U.S. Congress passes the Volstead Act over President Woodrow Wilson’s veto, paving the way for Prohibition to begin the following January.

1922 – March on Rome: Italian fascists led by Benito Mussolini march on Rome and take over the Italian government.

1936 – US President Franklin D. Roosevelt rededicates the Statue of Liberty on its 50th anniversary.

1940 – World War II: Italy invades Greece through Albania. This was the selected anniversary of Greece’s entry into World War II. It is celebrated in Greece as Okhi Day Day.

1941 – Holocaust in Kaunas, Lithuania: German SS forces arrange the massacre of more than 9,000 Jews of the Kaunas ghetto. After the victims assembled on the Demokratu square at 6 am to be shot they are buried in gigantic ditches.

1964 – Vietnam War: U.S. officials deny any involvement in bombing North Vietnam.

1965 – Nostra Aetate, the “Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions” of the Second Vatican Council, is promulgated by Pope Paul VI; it absolves the Jews of the alleged killing of Jesus, reversing Innocent III’s declaration from 760 years ago. In short, Pope Paul VI announces that the ecumenical council has decided that Jews are not collectively responsible for the killing of Christ.

1970 – The land speed record set by Gary Gabelich in a rocket-powered automobile called the Blue Flame, fueled with natural gas.

1982 – Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) wins elections, leading to first Socialist government in Spain after death of Franco. Felipe Gonzalez becomes Prime Ministerelect.

1985 – Mikhail Gorbachev becomes General Secretary of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union.

1985 – Sandinista Daniel Ortega becomes president of Nicaragua and makes peace overtures to the United States; American policy continues to support the Contras in their revolt against the Nicaraguan government.

1986 – The centennial of the Statue of Liberty’s dedication is re-celebrated in New York Harbor.

1998 – An Air China (Mainland China) jetliner is hijacked by disgruntled pilot Yuan Bin and flown to Taiwan.

2006 – Funeral service for the peace of the executed at Bykivnia forest, outside of Kiev, Ukraine, with reburial of 817 Ukrainian civilians (out of some 100,000) executed by Bolsheviks at Bykivnia in 1930s – early 1940s.

1954 – Benjamin O. Davis Jr. becomes the first black general in the United States Air Force.

1958 – Iskander Mirza, the first President of Pakistan, is deposed in a bloodless coup d’état by General Ayub Khan, who was appointed the enforcer of martial law by Mirza 20 days earlier.

1961 – NASA launched the first Saturn I rocket in Mission Saturn-Apollo 1.

1962 – Major Rudolph Anderson of the United States Air Force became the only direct human casualty of the Cuban Missile Crisis when his U-2 reconnaissance airplane was shot down in Cuba by a Soviet-supplied SA-2 Guideline surface-to-air missile.

1981 – The Soviet submarine U 137 runs aground on the east coast of Sweden.

1986 – The United Kingdom government suddenly deregulates financial markets, leading to a total restructuring of the way in which they operate in the country, in an event now referred to as the Big Bang.

1992 – United States Navy radioman Allen R. Schindler, Jr. is brutally murdered by shipmates for being gay, precipitating first military, then national debate about gays in the military that resulted in the United States “Don’t ask, don’t tell” military policy.

1997 – October 27, 1997 mini-crash: Stock markets around the world crash because of fears of a global economic meltdown. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummets 554.26 points to 7,161.15. For the first time, the New York Stock Exchange activated their “circuit breakers” twice during the day eventually making the controversial move of closing the Exchange early.

2002 – The ITV Network aired a constant regional service for the last time in England and Wales, but LWT lost its identity completely. All companies (except UTV, Channel, Scottish TV & Grampian TV) formed the national ITV1 with regional references only before regional programmes.

1640 – The Treaty of Ripon is signed, restoring peace between Scotland and Charles I of England.

1774 – The first Continental Congress adjourns in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1776 – Benjamin Franklin departed from America for France on a mission to seek French support for the American Revolution.

1795 – The French Directory, a five-man revolutionary government, is created.

1825 – The Erie Canal opens – passage from Albany, New York to Lake Erie.

1859 – The Royal Charter is wrecked on the coast of Anglesey, north Wales with 459 dead.

1860 – Meeting of Teano. Giuseppe Garibaldi, conqueror of the Kingdom of Two Sicilies, gives it to King Victor Emmanuel II of Italy.

1861 – The Pony Express officially ceased operations.

1863 – The Football Association is formed.

1881 – The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral takes place at Tombstone, Arizona.

1905 – Norway becomes independent from Sweden.

1912 – First Balkan War: The city of Thessaloniki is unified with Greece on the feast day of its patron Saint Demetrius. On the same day the Serbian troops captured Skopje.

1917 – World War I: Battle of Caporetto; Italy suffers a catastrophic defeat at the forces of Austria-Hungary and Germany.

1917 – World War I:Brazil declared in state of war with Central Powers.

1918 – Erich Ludendorff, quartermaster-general of the Imperial German Army, is dismissed by Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany for refusing to cooperate in peace negotiations.

1936 – The first electric generator at Hoover Dam went into full operation.

1940 – The P-51 Mustang makes its maiden flight.

1942 – World War II: In the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands during the Guadalcanal Campaign, one U.S. aircraft carrier, Hornet, was sunk and another aircraft carrier, Enterprise, is heavily damaged.

1943 – World War II: First flight of the Dornier Do 335 “Pfeil.”

1944 – World War II: The Battle of Leyte Gulf ends.

1947 – The Maharaja of Kashmir agrees to allow his kingdom to join India.

1947 – The British Military Occupation ends in Iraq.

1948 – Killer smog settles into Donora, Pennsylvania.

1951 – Boxer Joe Louis comes out of retirement to fight Rocky Marciano. However, Marciano would win the fight in eight rounds.

1954 – Trieste return to Italy.

1955 – After the last Allied troops have left the country and following the provisions of the Austrian Independence Treaty, Austria declares permanent neutrality.

1958 – Pan American Airways makes the first commercial flight of the Boeing 707 from New York City to Paris, France.

1964 – Eric Edgar Cooke becomes last person in Western Australia to be executed.

1965 – The Beatles are appointed Members of the Order of the British Empire (MBEs).

1977 – The last natural case of smallpox was discovered in Merca district, Somalia. The WHO and the CDC consider this date the anniversary of the eradication of smallpox, the most spectacular success of vaccination.

1978 – Independent Counsel Act is signed into law.

1979 – Park Chung-hee, President of South Korea is assassinated by KCIA head Kim Jae-kyu. Choi Kyu-ha becomes the acting President; Kim is executed the following May.

1984 – “Baby Fae” receives a heart transplant from a baboon.

1992 – The command and control system of the London Ambulance Service fails catastrophically.

1992 – The Charlottetown Accord fails to win majority support in a Canada-wide referendum.

1999 – Britain’s House of Lords votes to end the right of hereditary peers to vote in Britain’s upper chamber of Parliament.

2000 – Laurent Gbagbo takes over as president of Côte d’Ivoire following a popular uprising against President Robert Guéï.

2001 – The United States passes the USA PATRIOT Act into law.

2002 – Moscow Theatre Siege: Approximately 50 Chechen rebels and 150 hostages die when Russian Spetsnaz storm a theater building in Moscow, which had been occupied by the rebels during a musical performance three days before.

1917 – Traditionally understood date of the October Revolution, involving the capture of the Winter Palace, Petrograd, Russia.

1924 – The forged Zinoviev Letter is published in the Daily Mail, wrecking the British Labour Party’s hopes of re-election.

1935 – Hurricane floods Haiti, killing over 2,000 people.

1936 – Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini create the Rome-Berlin Axis.

1938 – The Archbishop of Dubuque, Francis J. L. Beckman, denounces Swing music as “a degenerated musical system… turned loose to gnaw away at the moral fiber of young people,” warning that it leads down a “primrose path to hell.”

1944 – Heinrich Himmler orders a crackdown on the Edelweiss Pirates, a loosely organized youth culture in Nazi Germany that had assisted army deserters and others to hide from the Third Reich.

1944 – The USS Tang (SS-306) under Richard O’Kane (the top submarine captain of World War II) is sunk by the ship’s own torpedo.

1944 – The Romanian Army liberates Carei, the last Romanian city under Axis Powers’ occupation.

1944 – Battle of Leyte Gulf, the largest naval battle in history, takes place in and around the Philippines between the Imperial Japanese Navy and the U.S. Third and U.S. Seventh Fleets.

1945 – The Republic of China takes over administration of Taiwan following Japan’s surrender to the Allies.

1970 – The wreck of Confederate submarine Hunley was found off Charleston, South Carolina, by pioneer underwater archaeologist, Dr. E. Lee Spence, then just 22 years old. Hunley was the first submarine to sink a ship in warfare.

1971 – The United Nations seated the People’s Republic of China and expelled the Republic of China

1972 – The Washington Post reports that White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman was the fifth person to control a secret cash fund designed to finance illegal political sabotage and espionage during the 1972 presidential election campaign (see also Watergate scandal).

1977 – Digital Equipment Corporation releases OpenVMS V1.0.

1980 – Proceedings on the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction conclude at The Hague.

1983 – Operation Urgent Fury: The United States and its Caribbean allies invade Grenada, six days after Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and several of his supporters were executed in a coup d’état.

1991 – History of Slovenia: Three months after the end of the Ten-Day War, the last soldier of the Yugoslav People’s Army leaves the territory of the Republic of Slovenia.

1992 – Lithuania holds a referendum on its first post-Soviet constitution.

1993 – Jean Chrétien becomes Prime Minister of Canada with a massive majority for his Liberal Party in a general election in which the governing Progressive Conservatives, led by Kim Campbell, lost 149 of 151 seats in the parliament.

1995 – A commuter train slams into a school bus in Fox River Grove, Illinois, killing seven students.

1996 – The “Days of Action”, the largest one day strike in Ontario, Canada’s history, as over 250,000 protesters converged on the Ontario Legislature and attempted to shutdown Toronto, in protest to the Mike Harris government’s budget cuts.

1997 – After a brief civil war which has driven President Pascal Lissouba out of Brazzaville, Denis Sassou-Nguesso proclaims himself the President of the Republic of the Congo.

2004 – Fidel Castro, Cuba’s President, announces that transactions using the American Dollar will be banned by November 8.

2007 – The first Airbus A380 passenger flight, operating for Singapore Airlines, with flight number SQ380, flying scheduled service between Singapore and Sydney, Australia.